Two kinds of experiences constitute the caesura between the sleeping state of mind and the awake state of mind:
1) before sleeping (hypnagogic state)
2) before awakening (hypnopompic state).
Usually they are very fast and, therefore, not perceived. However, we may observe some situations when they last longer than usual. This paper is about those states of mind and some of its relations with psychoanalytical practice.
In such experiences, all senses may be involved, and although the visual images are the most cited, because they cause a stronger impression and are more time-consuming, the auditory experiences are the most frequent. It is very common to find someone who has experienced being in a mental state, almost asleep, and hear his name being called and then awakening. In other words, the output of the hypnagogic state occurs by the call of "someone" who was over there taking care of the individual.
There are two important defining aspects of the hypnagogic state: 1) Stimulation of only one sense, 2) the contact with a protective object (alpha function).
The less protecting is the object, the more time-consuming can be the hypnagogic state. That is, the hypnagogic state could be a kind of reluctance to sleep because sleeping means to meet the failing protective object (bad object). Sometimes due to a massive failure, going to sleep means to meet the vacant object and with it comes envy, greed, hostility, omnipotence. Insomnia could frequently appear in such situation. It is a defense against contact with the bad object.
One should also note that the longer lasting is the hypnagogic state there is an increase of possibilities to assign veracity to it. Instead of recognizing that the individual was almost asleep and was awakened by the "illusion" that, for instance, he heard the voice of someone calling him, he feels to have had an experience that often acquires a mystical, religious, or supernatural interpretation. A kind of "Ghost" was present.
Such was the case of a 38-year-old patient while experiencing many conflicts due to a divorce. She reported that while lying in bed at night she saw her late grandmother staring at her. The grandmother was standing there, smiling, without saying anything. She felt at the same time scared and a sense of comfort. She tried to talk but Grandma did not say anything and walked away very fast.
When she was very young this patient used to have frequent problems with a psychotic mother. In extreme conflict situations, she used to run away to Grandma's House. She recalls becoming intimidated while going from her apartment to the apartment of her grandmother in a street nearby. She recalls being so small that could not push the elevator button. Then she climbed the stairs to get to Grandma's apartment, usually arriving there so tired that she fell asleep in Grandma’s arms.
The patient said very anxiously that she could not admit that the experience was a dream. It was so real. The ghost of the grandmother came to visit her.
Our position, as psychoanalysts, should not be to fear ghosts, poltergeists, spirits, demons, feelings, ideas and thoughts. Our position is not to argue to prove it is not true. This patient thinks that it is reasonable to feel it is a ghost.
However, it may be part of the job to add another interpretation while reinforcing the intention of not trying to prove that the psychoanalytic point of view is better than the patient’s point of view. We have to be careful with transformations in hallucinosis (Bion, 1965).
The analyst said that the experience could signify a meeting with an idealized protection that she needed at that time. Maybe she was feeling insecure and not having the sense of protection she might need it.
She added: That is right, I feel very insecure except during our sessions, I feel secure here to say those things. Only a psychoanalyst would not consider me a crazy person for having such experience.
One could notice that there is a caesura: much more continuity between what I have said to the patient and what the patient said to me.
I can observe possibilities of K link in direction to O. I can say this in the following way: Confidence creates sincerity and sincerity creates confidence. It is a circular argument. As those elements gradually increase in the link, the diameter of psychic intimacy also increases. Therefore, one may have confidence + sincerity + intimacy= mental development (Chuster, 2014).
The psychotic mother of the patient always rejected her by decreasing the value of her personal achievements. The patient got married to a husband who repeated the same pattern of relationship of the mother.
Another patient reported that he got home late at night and found an old friend in his living room after hearing nothing about her for many years. She was there sleeping on the couch. He was very surprised and started thinking how she could have gotten into the house? Was it the housekeeper that opened the door for her? No, this is not the day of the housekeeper. Then he tried to wake her up by calling her name. She stared at him but did not say anything. When he went to the next room to store his jacket, he heard her saying that she was about to leave at that moment, because she was late to meet her son. He said: please wait a few more minutes, let us talk a little about your life. However, when he returned to the living room she had already left. He ran to the elevator but the elevator was at the floor. He ran to the stair entrance but he did not hear any sound of steps.
The next day, deeply intrigued with the visit and this friend, he decided to phone her son. He said to him: I saw three days ago your mother in my house, but she left suddenly without talking to me. The son said very shocked: My mother died six months ago….
Of course, the patient was shocked too! He was very scared of the experience. He was afraid that it was a sign of becoming mentally ill; but he also considered that he had a kind of supernatural experience, although he was not a man of religious beliefs.
I asked him if he was too tired when he was driving back home at that night. He confirmed and said he had to stop for a few moments at a gas station to sleep. Then he associated that the gas station was located in a street with the family name of his friend. They used to meet there when they were teenagers.
This patient was having a deep conflict with his teenage daughter. His daughter was using drugs and had a “bad trip” the previous weekend that put her in the hospital. His woman friend used to be a lovely and caring friend when they were young.
Therefore, when I proposed to him to think of an experience of contact with many meanings in a state of mind near sleep, he felt relief and cried. I could add many free associations that brought this patient to his childhood conflicts, but it is not the purpose of this paper.
Another patient one week after his father’s funeral was driving back home very sad and tired. He was having insomnia. His physician gave him sleeping pills but they did not work properly. He could not work for two weeks and this was the first day he got back to business. Of course, during the day many problems came up with no solutions at all. He was deeply frustrated when he stopped for a moment to refresh in a gas station courtyard. It was then he heard his father talking to him in the radio. His father was counseling him in many aspects of his work. However, the voice was too low. The patient felt at the same time scared and comforted.
I said that he probably knew how his father used to think. That made sense to him. Nevertheless, he said that he was afraid that I could said he might go to a mental institution. I added that there is an aspect of cruelty in not trying to understand some facts in a broad range (which was quite his father’s way of thinking). I also said that he had lost the protection of the good father and was about to meet the cruel object in his dreams. I think this is the reason for his insomnia. The bad object is the absent object.
Of course, there is a lot more information about this case in order to explain why I gave that interpretation. The reader will note that in all three cases there was a deceased person representing a container that was prone to fail. Just part of the communication was going through.
In a general way, situations of insomnia are produced when the individual does not feel himself as a confident container for his own experiences. The container who will deal with the conflicts during the state of sleep (HYPNOS) is a persecutory and punitive container, therefore unable to properly digest the conflictive facts that occurred when he was awake. Those facts certainly represent a repetition of a failure, but also the perception of the impossibility of something between the individual and his mother, or also between the individual and his parents. The impossibility to have confidence, sincerity and intimacy.
Body reactions are sometimes present in those states as for instance a hypnagogic jolt (a sudden tensing of the body or a feeling of falling). Those are frequent descriptions. They last less than a second.
The initial periods of paradoxical sleep (REM sleep) link to sensory images and may be associated with a state of mind described as not being able to act; this is because in reality the body is sleeping.
Usually, the hypnagogic and hypnopompic phenomena are not indicative of dysfunctional or pathological processes. But when they last longer than usual, they may be indicative of a state where sleeping instead being a container for the mind has turned into something scary or threatening. This is when sub-thalamic fears (terror) may appear. Primitive mental states usually follow those feelings and require a good deal of imagination to put all the split experiences together.
The container way of functioning is related to the initial experiences of life with the mother. In those hypnagogic experiences the process of reverie is perceived as flawed or flawing, and consequently, as an experience in which there is something impossible to be accomplished with the mother. Such impossibility is the main factor that increases the feeling of terror. In other words, the impossibility is a consequence of an extensive failure of alpha function.
One can also note how these ancient experiences are transferred to other relationships in life, to a greater or lesser degree, and can affect the emotional and sexual life in intense or episodic forms.
Once again, one of the features of the hypnagogic state is that it reaches only one sense. That is, if the experiences reported refer to hearing, there is no other sense involved. The ghost is talking but cannot be seen or if the ghost is being seen, he does not talk. This differentiates the hypnagogic state from a pathological hallucinatory state.
The hypnagogic state sometimes are reported as being deeply creative. During its occurrence one could have access to unconscious inspiration as we often see in poetry creation.
Therefore, the hypnagogic state sometimes is considered a kind of creative state of mind, without any boundaries or limitations. In this state, one may have access to unconscious resources without the superego restrictions.
Thomas Alva Edison used to value this state so much that he developed his own technique to keep the state on while he was working through his inventions. He used to sit on a special chair trying to relax and meditate in order to reach a hypnagogic state. He used to grasp a snooker ball with his fist turned upside down and his arm resting on the chair. He then placed a metal plate on the floor. In case he fell asleep, the ball would fall down and make a noise that would wake him up. He then repeated the procedure many times searching for a “wild thought”.
Extreme situations often produce hypnagogic states, like for example, situations of war or near-death states or near coma states. It may happen when someone has had surgery and is coming back from anesthesia, or some situations in Intensive Care Units.
I will use the model of war to dialogue on the subject.
The central problem is to cross the caesura between a mental state and another state of mind that has completely different features. Such as going from war to life in society and vice versa. The individual needs to handle the caesura that occurs in his day to day, and for this depends on his psyche being able to digest the experiences and, for such task needs to have a trustable container.
In other words, soldiers that must go to war deal with death. They take life away from others. This is normally the role of God. Asking young soldiers to take that role without adequate psychological preparation can lead to damaging consequences.
Yet there is a point where soldiers must go back home. They should cross a caesura between the world where they are acting in the role of God and the world where they are acting in an ordinary societal role.
Killing someone without splitting oneself from the feelings that the act engenders requires an effort of supreme consciousness that is beyond most humans. Killing is what warriors do for society. Yet when they return home, society does not generally acknowledge that the act it asked them to do creates a deep split in their psyches, or a psychological weight most of them will stumble beneath for the rest of their lives. Warriors must learn how to integrate the experience of killing, to put the pieces of their psyches back together again. For the most part, they are left to do this on their own without the proper instruments.
War is the antithesis of the most fundamental rule of ethics– not to do unto others what you would have others not do unto you. When called upon to fight, we violate many codes of civilized behavior. To survive psychically in the proximity of the God Mars, one has to come to terms with stepping outside conventional moral conduct. This requires coming to terms with guilt over killing and maiming other people.
Reconciling ethics and moral conduct taught in childhood, with brutal actions of war has been a problem for warriors of good conscience for centuries. It is also a problem for society in any time. When a warrior goes to combat, he loses the protection of society. When he comes back, he may be suspicious of society, because it was society that sent him to war, therefore he feels unaccepted or dangerous.
Bion tried to describe such a situation in which he himself was involved during World War I by quoting the Mahabharata, the classic Indian epic.
At first Krishna tries to buck up Arjuna by appealing to his reason, explaining how critical the situation is. This fails. Then he appeals to pride, chiding Arjuna for letting his feelings get the better of him. This fails too. Finally, Krishna taunts Arjuna about his manhood. Arjuna is not swayed.
One can see here the same situation described at the crossroads in the myth of Oedipus. On one side, there is Laius in a chariot driven by a charioteer, on the other side, Oedipus walking towards his tragic destiny. The dialogue is quite the same. Should I step aside to let the other carry on in his path or should I fight because I have rights to be number one? Who is going to be ready to let the other continue and not be arrogant or too proud of his own qualities?
Even two or three thousand years ago, appeals to manhood and social duties were not sufficient to stop killing our equals on the other side. Krishna presses forward appealing to religion, usually a surefire persuader. “Believe me”, Krishna says, “the eternal soul is imperishable. No one can comprehend it…You do not kill and your victim is not killed…Weapons cannot hurt the soul; fire cannot burn it; water cannot wet it. It is eternal and it is the same forever. Once you realize this truth there is no need for you to grieve.”
Religion is still misused to get men to kill their brothers. But saying it’s all right to kill my own equal because, just maybe, the universe is a vast recycling plant, had about the same effect on Arjuna that it would on any of us today – none.
Any warrior has to be very careful about whom the politicians make out to be devils. Sometimes we have to choose sides with limited information and limited self-knowledge. History is full of examples of decent citizens making big mistakes while defending ideas based on false premises. For instance, the Germans during World War II committed crimes against humanity killing the “devils” created by the false premise of the existence of a plot of the international Jewry.
Krishna tells Arjuna that there are two paths to realization, the path of knowledge by meditation and the path of work by men of action. The same paths are identical to those portrayed in our Western mythology, for example the story of the knight Parsifal, which is part of the Grail legend. There the fisher king’s brother represents the path of knowledge. He is a monk and religious contemplative whom Parsifal meets just before reentering the Grail Castle. Parsifal himself shows us the path of action, the same path put forward by Krishna to Arjuna.
The talk between Oedipus and Tiresias follows the same pattern, as well as the talk between Oedipus and the Sphinx.
One can say that there are many times when people are at war with themselves and others. During this state of mind, they might have “wild thoughts”. The problem, should such a thought come along, is what to do with it. Of course, if it is wild, you might try to domesticate it. However, how to do it? How to manage a wild thought in a path free from moral impulses and religious standards?
Bion pointed out that it seems to be simplest to try to tackle the problem by considering what this strange thought is. We might get a clue about it by wondering in what frame of mind or in what conditions this wild thought turned up and became enmeshed in our method of thinking. It could be that it seemed to occur to us when we are asleep.
Moreover, one must use a kind of a model to develop more hypotheses to work with the situations that arise from those states. In summary, one must respect the complexity of mental functioning (Chuster, 2014).
I suggest that for the hypnagogic states of mind one can use The Death of Palinurus (Virgil 29-19 B.C.) quoted by Bion (1977).
Virgil, in Aeneid, wrote that everybody in Ulysses’ fleet went to sleep. Palinurus was on duty fully awake monitoring the weather conditions. The God Somnus disguised as Phorbas, assuming a human form (as Krishna did), said to him: “don’t worry; I can take care of the situation”. However, Palinurus said: No! I am not going to be tricked by the placidity of the Mediterranean Sea. Then he tied himself to the helm of the boat. This made him very helpless. Somnus was narcissistically wounded with Palinurus' denial. Who is this arrogant human being, which is defying a God?
Could an analyst who is “tied up” to a theory be a representation of the helplessness or Palinurus? Could the God be his own omnipotence or the patient’s omnipotence? Could the boat represent analysis?
The god became free to act through Palinurus, collected some drops of water from the Lethes (the caesura between the world of the living and the world of the dead), and spread them over his eyelids. Palinurus fell asleep tied up to the helm. The god threw him into the sea with fury.
Drugged by the God of sleep, Palinurus falls overboard with a big noise. Aeneas, captain of the fleet, wakes up and takes over the helm. Unaware of the god’s influence, he accuses Palinurus of complacency. That can also happen with a psychoanalyst who uses memory, desire, and need for comprehension. Using those elements, he will not see and therefore cannot help the patient. He can also become drugged with a transformation in hallucinosis (Bion, 1965) trying to prove some psychoanalytical point of view. Moreover, by its turn the patient can act as the God Somnus (omnipotence).
The brief exchange of speeches between Somnus (Hypnos) and Palinurus is carefully composed and finely characterized by Virgil. Each is given four lines, but of sharply contrasting tone. Somnus begins by courteously addressing Palinurus by name and patronymic, followed by three parallel clauses that reinforce their message with incantatory echoic effects: aequera…aequaetate…aurae…hora quieti. The sea is calm…The first line is ordering Palinurus to “steal his tired eyes from his toil” and offers to take Palinurus’ place. Palinurus replies in a very different tone with three indignant rhetorical questions. Palinurus’s indignation is roused by the thought that he could be negligent in service of his leader Aeneas – devotion to the post in order to allow Aeneas to proceed on his sacred path.
Palinurus being in an ultimate vertex the sacrificial victim; “the death of the victim will save many”, which constitutes one of the most terrible fantasies amongst all, the death of the child. Could that be the source of terror in those hypnagogic states?
REFERENCES
Bion, W.R. (1965). Transformations. London: Heinemann.
Bion, W.R. (1977). Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura. London: Karnac.
Bion, W.R. (1997). Taming Wild Thoughts. London: Karnac.
Chuster, A. (2014). A Lonesome Road: essays on the complexity of W.R.Bion’s work. Imago: Rio de Janeiro.
Marlantes, K. (2011). What Is Like To Be In War, New York: Grove Press.
Virgil (29-19 B.C.). Aeneid (book 4), London: Penguin Classics, 2010.
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